Automatic Trip Expense Reports

Your company can choose whether to automatically or manually create expense reports from business trips. A business trip is a collection of items that make up an employee's business travel.

For example, a trip may include a travel itinerary and a cash advance. The contents of an automatic trip expense report is based on whether an employee was issued a corporate card or uses cash only. The application automatically creates a trip expense report if the employee selects the application to initiate report creation on the Expenses Preferences page.

If an employee was issued a corporate card, the automatic trip expense report contains corporate card transactions. Expenses attempts to match the travel itinerary reservation with a corporate card transaction.

If an employee doesn't have a corporate card, the automatic trip expense report process creates a report with cash expense items that correspond to each travel reservation item. Other nontravel cash expenses generated by the employee aren't included in this trip expense report.

Generate Trip Expense Reports When Matching Card Transactions Are Unavailable

You can configure the application to allow expense report creation from trips for corporate card employees, even if the corporate card charges from the trip aren't available in Expenses work area.

For example, an employee booked a business trip using a centrally billed card. When the application creates corporate card transactions in Expenses from the feed files, these card transactions of the trip will not be available in the employee's Expenses work area.

You can configure the application to allow expense report creation from trips for these bookings. When you set the value of Enable Report Creation for Users Before Card Charges Appear to Yes, the application creates a trip expense report, even if the corporate card charges from the trip aren't available in the Expenses work area when initiated. The default setting is No.

The application uses available data from the trip and creates the trip expense report. When creating an expense report from the trip, the application checks for any matching card charges for the reservation:

• If there are matching card charges, the application creates an expense report with these card charges. In this case, employees can’t update the expense amount.

• If there are no matching card charges, the application creates cash expense lines for the reservation and adds them to the report. The application marks the cash expense lines as prepaid when the reservations are marked as prepaid on the itinerary. Employees can modify the expense data, such as prepaid flag, amounts, and so on, if needed.

To automate expense reports based on trips, the following people perform these setup tasks:

• The system administrator chooses to automate trip expense reports.

• The system administrator chooses to generate trip expense reports even if the matching card transaction data isn’t available for the corporate card users in the Expenses work area.

• Each employee selects the timing of the automatic trip expense reports.

Allow Automatic Trip Expense Reports

If your company chooses to automate expense reports from trips, your implementor selects Yes from the Enable Expense Report Automatic Creation choice list in the Processing Options for Expense Report section on the Manage System Options page.

In the Setup and Maintenance work area, use the following to navigate to the Manage System Options page:

• Offering: Financials

• Functional Area: Expenses

• Task: Manage Expenses System Options

Allow to Create Trip Expense Reports When Matching Card Transactions Are Unavailable

To create expense reports from trips for corporate card employees, even if the card charges from the trip aren't available in Expenses, complete these steps:

1. Sign in as an Application Implementation Consultant.

2. In the Setup and Maintenance work area, use the following:

   • Offering: Financials

   • Functional Area: Expenses

   • Task: Manage Expenses System Options

3. On the Manage Expenses System Options page, in the Processing Options for Expense Report section, set Enable Report Creation for Users Before Card Charges Appear to Yes.

   Note: You can set the value of Enable Report Creation for Users Before Card Charges Appear to Yes only when the Enable Automatic Travel Expense Report Creation is set to Yes.

4. Click Save or Save and Close.

You can enable this at the implementation level on the Manage Expenses System Options page, which applies to all business units. Alternatively, you can enable this for specific business units on the Create/Edit Business Unit window in Corporate Options for Expense Report tab.

Select Timing of Automatic Trip Expense Reports

Once your implementor chooses to automate expense reports from business trips, employees can then select whether they want themselves or Expenses to initiate automatic trip expense reports. Employees specify their preference by selecting an option in the Expense Report Automatically Created from Trip section. Navigation: User's name choice list > Set Preferences > Expenses Preferences

The following table describes the timing of the initiation options.

Initiation Option	Description
Employee initiates	Employee selects a trip on the Trips page in the Expenses work area and clicks Create Report from Trip or navigates to the Edit Travel Itinerary page.
Application initiates upon first expenditure	This option is the default value. The process, Process Trip Expense Report, automatically creates an expense report when the first corporate card transaction related to a trip is uploaded to Expenses. When the process is subsequently run, the expense report is updated with any new corporate card transactions that are related to the trip. If a new expense report is needed, the application creates one. For example, the application generated one expense report, which was submitted for approvals. Any remaining transactions are added to a new trip expense report.
Application initiates upon trip completion	The process, Process Trip Expense Report, automatically creates an expense report when a trip is completed that contains corporate card transactions that are related to the completed trip. When the process is subsequently run, the expense report is updated with any new corporate card transactions that are related to the trip. If a new expense report is needed, the application creates one. For example, the application generated one expense report, which was submitted for approvals. Any remaining transactions are added to a new trip expense report.

Tip: Mobile device users who download corporate card transactions and submit them from their mobile devices are advised to select the Employee initiates option.

Add Filters to Trip Age Filter

Using the View filter you can filter trips by status and trip age. Trip Age filter provides the following default values: Any, Less than 30 days, Less than 60 days, and Less than 90 days. You can add filters to the Trip Age Filter if required.

To add a filter to the Trip Age Filter, perform the following steps.

1. In the Setup and Maintenance work area, go to the following:

   • Offering: Financials

   • Functional Area: Expenses

   • Task: Manage Travel Policy Lookup Types

2. On the Manage Travel Policy Lookup Types page, in Search section, enter ORA_EXM_TRIP_AGE_FILTER in the Lookup Type field and click Search.

3. In the ORA_EXM_TRIP_AGE_FILTER: Lookup Codes section, click the New (+) icon to add lookup codes.

4. In the Lookup Code field, enter TRIP_AGE_LESS_THAN_xx, where xx indicates the number of days, for example. TRIP_AGE_LESS_THAN_45, and TRIP_AGE_LESS_THAN_120.

5. In the Meaning field, enter the description of the filter.

6. Click Save or Save and Close.